Hristo's FI Journal

[Hristo Botev]

Dips + pullups are some of the most beneficial movements for building actual functional strength and bodyweight capability, much more than accessory movements. The closed chain movement is especially beneficial in translating to general bodyweight manipulation with climbing, handbalancing, and generally manipulating your body in relationship to the world. 10 good form pullups (31X1 tempo or something similar with the chest touching the bar at the top) is also a very good goal! Psyched to see when you make that!

My primary goal remains strength training and trying to put as much muscle mass on as I can while I still can (so, barbell), but I also recognize that a strength-only focus will result in some unhealthy side effects. So I'm trying to find the right balance for me, though I can assure you that "handbalancing" is not in my future.

[Hristo Botev]

Dodged a housing bullet.

We've been in the new place a year which means we get itchy feet (married to a military brat and I am one effectively as we moved around every 2-4 years growing up). DW started talking about home reno, which I knew meant I'd start seeing Zillow links from her in short order.

All that itchy feet energy ended up getting focused on a house for rent down the road from us that DW saw on a morning run that is on the water on a fantastic piece of property (1.5 acres and set back FAR from the road), of the type that was common when I grew up here but that doesn't exist much anymore because those old large waterfront lots have now been subdivided up, sometimes many times.

We talked ourselves into renting it for the kids to enjoy while they are in their pre-teen, tween, and teenage years (there is a cachet in our town and always has been of being someone who "lives on the water").

Our rationale was that we've got a paid-for home in the neighborhood already with which we have about as much of our net worth tied up in home equity as we want; so we could rent out our home, move into the waterfront home, and the difference out of pocket would be about $1,500 or so that would be the "premium" we'd be paying each month for the privilege of living on the water without having all the headaches that come along with owning on the water. Added bonus is that the waterfront house is about 2,600 sf as opposed to 1,600 sf we live in now, has a separate space that would work as my office, kids wouldn't have to share a bathroom, we would no longer have to share walls with our kids' respective bedrooms, and because it's on about 1.5 acre of land and a couple hundred yards back from the road, my antisocial self would only have to tolerate occasionally waving to our waterfront neighbors on either side from our respective docks, because the only other people I'd ever see besides my family would be those people I chose to see.

All very tempting, and it all sort of "makes sense" from anything other than an ERE perspective.

So we signed a poorly drafted lease for a 5-year term (we wanted 8) that committed ourselves to roughly a quarter of a million dollars, about $90K of which was "waterfront premium" sunk costs that would be lost forever, ASSUMING we were able to rent out our home for what we thought we could rent it out for for the entirety of that 5-year term (not likely); otherwise the premium costs would be much higher.

We then told our kids about the move and they immediately (and surprisingly) set us straight as to the absurdity of the whole plan. Apparently they've been paying attention to some of what we've been saying to them about money the past several years. Also, apparently they really like our house and our neighborhood and don't ever want to move until they move out--that was news to us.

So, long story short, after a sleepless night filled with consternation for DW and I, I relied upon my experience litigating lease disputes (though always commercial leases) to get us a clean and costless exit strategy out of the lease before anyone had taken any significant steps towards fulfilling the lease obligations.

Silver lining has been: (a) we have a new found appreciation for our house and a commitment to make it even more our home than we had before; and (b) after having run through lots of budget projections as we worked out the numbers of our renting on the water plan, we now feel VERY RICH having reverted back to the norm.

A win for avoiding lifestyle inflation.

[Henry]

61 Pages deep and your kids are correcting you on major life decisions.

Congratulations on becoming the Platonic ideal of those who can't do, teach.

[Hristo Botev]

Congratulations on becoming the Platonic ideal of those who can't do, teach.

OK, I'll bite, what do you mean by "do" here?

[theanimal]

Nice. Sounds like it was a good opportunity to discover where everyone in the family is at with regards to your home. What are you thinking of doing now that you know you'll be in the same spot for longer? Do keeping/raising animals come back into the picture?

Also, Henry is Jason reincarnate. With that in mind, I think he is telling you more or less that you got "Fiskered" by your kids. viewtopic.php?p=171911#p171911

[Henry]

I wonder why JLF wishes his wife went to the gym. I mean I can't see her getting fat. The woman hasn't had a single piece of birthday cake in decades.

[take2]

Aww, I miss Jason and his crazy profanity littered yet profound posts. I hope he’s doing well.

[Henry]

OK, I'll bite, what do you mean by "do" here?

Ask your kids.

[Hristo Botev]

Also, Henry is Jason reincarnate.

Jason was funny though

[Hristo Botev]

. . .

nevermind

[Biscuits and Gravy]

Can’t wait to follow your kids’ journals when they show up here!

+1 to missing Jason’s contributions.

[suomalainen]

Oh man, I haven't caught up on this journal since I took my little hiatus and when I started re-engaging (a little), there were like 40 new pages, but yeah, I totally get the "throwing excess money away to make life with the teenagers easier" planning. But your kids' reactions reminds me of a wonderful nugget of wisdom that I learned from @halfmoon's 16-year old step-kid:

your dreams are not my dreams

Props to you for raising kids who feel self-aware enough and confident enough to tell you when you're doing something "for them" that isn't really for them, and props to them for both being and expressing.

[suomalainen]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... n-00100279

This seems aligned with things you've written in the past (and possibly "Henry" too). Read any of his stuff?

[Hristo Botev]

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/ ... n-00100279

This seems aligned with things you've written in the past (and possibly "Henry" too). Read any of his stuff?

I'm aware of him and I read "Why Liberalism Failed" at some point, but I don't really recall much. I don't read contemporary books on politics anymore, however. The fact that he's a Catholic who teaches at the most un-Catholic Catholic school in America, and the fact that Politico just did a puff piece on him, makes me suspect he is just controlled opposition, whether he knows it or not. Honestly, I (usually) vote, but that is about the extent of my involvement or interest in politics anymore.

It's like people who want to talk about what great an idea "distributism" is, from Rerum Novarum and as trumpeted by Chesterton. Sure, sounds great, but who gives a shit really.

[suomalainen]

Haha, not much of an endorsement, guess I'll skip it.

[Hristo Botev]

Haha, not much of an endorsement, guess I'll skip it.

I mean, if contemporary politics and political theory is an interest of yours, Deneen's "Why Liberalism Failed" is probably worth a read, regardless of what your own political leanings may be. He's a much smarter guy than me and given that he is coming from a Catholic perspective when it comes to social justice, it's pretty rich stuff--it's just not much that hasn't been said before in various encyclicals. For me, Plato's Republic kind of ruined me on taking contemporary "politics" too seriously, at least for now; perhaps Aristotle will make me think differently when I get to him.

Lately I've been reading several contemporary books on geopolitics; not because I think I have a whole lot of personal agency to bring about any changes on a macro level (or even care to), but just because it's a way of looking at the world and understanding problems and perspectives that is new to me and that I've found helpful.

[suomalainen]

Yeah, that second paragraph resonates. I read / stay "informed" not because my vote matters or because I want to be a revolutionary, but just because I'm generally interested in exploring my blind spots. I'm generally socially liberal and fiscally conservative, so neither US party is really all that compelling to me, but some of the ideas highlighted in the Politico article seemed interesting, like looking at the downsides of "liberal democracy" (atomism and the like). I've usually just waved off the alternatives as "obviously worse" (various forms of authoritarianism?), so maybe it is just a policy disagreement in disguise, but if there was an argument for a structure better than a constitutional republic, I'd be interested in the arguments for/against. As you said, it doesn't really matter, but just for the broadening horizons thing.

[Hristo Botev]

Have you read Plato's Republic, and if so did you do it as part of a seminar or some sort of similar situation that required some actual wrestling with the ideas? His discussion of the 5 regimes was a pretty big eye opener for me. That said, Plato was writing before Christ, and so assuming his observations were relatively accurate in a world before Christ, did Christ fundamentally change the way humans govern themselves, such that his observations as the manner in which governmental systems degenerate don't apply as accurately anymore (like recognizing the dignity in each individual human, whether ally or enemy, "master" or "slave"; the very idea of liberalism, etc.)? I tend to think not; that the enlightenment wasn't really. But regardless, Plato says some things about ''democracy" and the sort of individuals that such a government creates as it degenerates into tyranny that certainly looked pretty damn familiar.

. . . but if there was an argument for a structure better than a constitutional republic, I'd be interested in the arguments for/against. As you said, it doesn't really matter, but just for the broadening horizons thing.

I didn't read the Politico piece, but isn't the "slam" against Deneen (and Vermeule, et al.) that they are effectively monarchists without a monarchy; trying to lay the groundwork for the next "philosopher king" to rise up and take the reigns? I may be completely wrong there; it's been a year or more since I looked at any of that stuff, but I seem to remember that being a whole kerfuffle back when Sohrab Ahmari and David French were having their whole public spat of the kind that only academics and essay/blog writers could really give a shit about.

[suomalainen]

I don't know enough from only reading the Politico piece to frame Deneen's arguments or his critics, but the piece says this about his view:

Philosophically, common-good conservatism is premised on the idea that there is a universal “common good” that transcends the interests of any particular community or constituency — a belief with deep roots in Catholic social teaching. It rejects pluralism, as well as conservatives’ traditional emphasis on limited government, arguing that a strong central government should endorse a socially conservative vision of morality and enforce that vision in law. In contrast to the “national conservatism” that’s also gaining traction on the populist right, Deneen’s vision of conservatism is also skeptical of nationalism, which the postliberals view as a byproduct of the liberal order ... This new regime will be “superficially the same” as the current political order, but it will be led by a new class of conservative elites who share the values of non-elites and govern in their interests. Deneen calls the resulting alliance between postliberal elites and conservative populists “aristopopulism,” and suggests that it should span government, academia, media, entertainment and other cultural institutions.

and the least reactionary summary of criticism is this:

[It's not fascism, but] A better framework for understanding Deneen’s objective, she suggested, is what scholars call “illiberal constitutionalism,” a sort of halfway house between liberal democracy and traditional authoritarianism that maintains the trappings of a liberal regime while dramatically expanding the power of the state. “I think that they are paving the way for a certain kind of movement in that direction,” she added.

So, yeah, seems more like a policy disagreement than, you know, like some new political philosophy. But no, I haven't read Plato since college and don't remember anything. But agree that it seems many modern ideas are just rehashes of really old stuff. The first batch of (recorded) thinkers seemed to have figured out a shit-tonne (metric) about humanity and we haven't changed that much since.

[chenda]

Sounds very much like how many Asian 'democracies' are run. ''a sort of halfway house between liberal democracy and traditional authoritarianism that maintains the trappings of a liberal regime while dramatically expanding the power of the state'' would perfectly describe Singapore and arguably chacterise much of Japan, Taiwan and South Korea.